The AQMO Project
AQMO aims at providing an end-to-end urban platform in the Rennes Metropolitan area that extends current practices in air quality measurements, allows citizens to grasp the data for their own sake and policy makers to take informed decisions. Rennes Metropolitan area regroups 43 cities and is the 10th largest metropolis in France in term of population.
After the end of the project, the platform is intended to be used by Rennes Metropole. Moreover, additional data and capabilities could be included easily, and the platform could be easily transferable and replicable to other cities.
We propose a transversal approach that span from sensors to supercomputers in order to deliver day-to-day data as well as capabilities to help catastrophic event handling (denoted urgent computing). This project explores the use of High Performance Computing (HPC) both centrally in supercomputing centres and distributed on enhanced sensors (Edge computing). HPC capabilities are necessary to perform the numerical simulation with an accurate pollution dispersion model that would include sensors data-assimilation.
To achieve, in a cost-effective manner, rigorous air quality measurements in a wide area we will exploit the local transportation bus network with high quality sensors. In the case of measurements for catastrophic event, we intend to use drones. One important aspect of the project is to implement HPC as a service. The resulting data will be made available to citizens thanks to the Open-Data Metropolitan Service that is being developed by Rennes Metropolis. Meta data will be published on the French national Open Data Portal and the European Data Portal.
The project consortium includes Rennes metropolis, one public air quality measurement organization, a bus operator, a computing centre and one computing centres association, a research centre and three HPC SMEs.
About the Connecting Europe Facility
The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is a funding instrument of the European Union that aims to promote growth, jobs and competitiveness through targeted infrastructure investment at European level. It supports the development of high performing, sustainable and efficiently interconnected trans-European networks in the fields of transport, energy and digital services.